


Over Again

by loveandwarandmagick



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: A bit sad, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Magic, Mentions of Death, Original Character(s), Pining, Slow Burn, Watford (Simon Snow), but that seems to be the theme of my fics huh?, only alluded to though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24883354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandwarandmagick/pseuds/loveandwarandmagick
Summary: Is it better to speak or to die? He’d asked.Die, Baz thinks, watching Simon’s blue eyes dance with the light of the flame. Over and over.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 12
Kudos: 48





	Over Again

**Author's Note:**

> hello y'all, hope the world is treating you well
> 
> here's a reincarnation au because i'm physically incapable of publishing my next chaptered w.i.p (for WHATEVER reasons)
> 
> (btw this isn't my favorite work, though i love the theme of it. my writing felt a bit off in this, so be aware that it may ?? be deleted? just maybe afkjdlf it depends, i'm sorry, i'll let y'all know before i do)
> 
> to explain a bit: this work implies that they lived a bunch of lives before, and that they reincarnated as simon and baz, set in canon

It never gets easier. It’ll never get easier.

How does his heart hurt this much when it remains unmoving in his chest? How can he teach himself how to breathe again if his lungs are uncooperative, if they don’t need air? 

How is it possible that the cycle resets every time he dies, but it hasn’t now? This is death; this is dying.

-

The first time they met was in the spring. This is how it began.

Baz remembers it, though not very clearly. When things reset the first time, the vivid, flowering plants faded into dim shades of grey in the back of his memory. When the cycle reset, he carried his aching heart in his chest and felt it hurt up until the moment they met again. 

Seeing him again was a relief, back then. 

Now it feels like dying, over and over again, each time Baz’s eyes find him. 

-

_ You’re already dead _ , says his stubborn mind.  _ Give up _ . 

But the world is dark. If there is golden light in the edges of his vision, it is not because he pictures him to fill the space; it is more that his soul is inseparable from the memory of him, so much brighter in this life than ever before. 

He hasn’t seen him since last year, and he has to before he goes back, finally, to break the cycle. No more repeats.

_ There is a limit to how much ache I can bear _ , he thinks, and shuts his eyes, as if it could make a difference in this endless, pressing dark.

-

The last time in the first life that Baz had seen him, he was bleeding out on the ground, laying next to a tattered messenger bag. The contents were spilled out everywhere, broken pens and a pair of glasses. 

_ “I had an accident,” _ he’d said, and laughed, and laughed. Spring was turning to autumn, dropping red leaves along the walk. The colors melded with blood, with the rust colored spill of his curls, with the ink of a dozen red pens. 

_ “Get the fuck up,” _ Baz had hissed, frantic and angered by his careless, looping laughter. The air around them was still, with no one around, and yet, he'd looked for help. And he’d laughed again at that, reaching upwards before letting his hand drop to the ground with a wince. And there was so much blood, so much quiet to be broken by jagged, hysterical laughter. 

And then there was nothing at all. As he took his last gasping breath, Baz’s world faded out. 

This is how it ended. 

-

There’s noise somewhere outside, but he’s not sure if it’s his imagination, or someone coming to finally finish him off.

_ Would that break it?  _

No, no. He’s tried before. Restart, over again.  _ That’s not how this works _ , came the voice, when the cycle restarted.  _ Something must change, first. _

He knows that the change is in their connection.  _ Reciprocation _ , says the voice, same as always.  _ There is love there, but you must unlock it _ .  _ Both of you. Be kinder, to him and yourself. _

Baz has never tried. He was a coward the first time, and he’s been one in every life since. He’s learned that he can’t stop his feelings, and he can’t stop the end. He has learned to pick up the pieces of his aching heart and force them together again, and has learned to be apathetic in exchange for temporary relief.

-

The second time they met, there was something sparking behind his familiar blue eyes. It was winter; the opposite to the first. He’d looked miserable, sunken under a pile of clothes, a scarf, and glasses. He didn’t have them in his first life. 

This is how it began.

Oh what a relief it used to be to see him. It was, at that moment, after what had happened just so soon. When Baz had come into this second life, his first glimpse of him was in a nightmare.

Second life.  _ Second chance _ , the voice corrected, before he’d come into it. If he believed that something would come of it, he might’ve called it that too. 

He’d ducked into a coffee shop, ordered an earl grey with extra cream and three sugars, and ran into him, sitting by the window with all his layers on. And there it was, the familiarity. Looking at him was easy as breathing, talking to him felt like unlocking the front door to his home.

He’d dropped his keys, right in front of the door. Then he reached for them and smacked his head on the door frame, right in front of Baz as he was walking out. When he’d staggered back, he’d collided with Baz’s knees, and upended his tea all over the both of them.

Three months later, Baz picked up the newspaper and found his name on the headline, found the words  _ tragedy _ and  _ mother  _ and  _ unknown _ . 

That is how it ended. 

-

In their last life, she’d been his cousin. In the one before, his teacher. In the second, she was the one selling newspapers. One of the in-betweens of too many lives to count; she’d been his best friend. 

He knows her soul almost as well as he knows his own. She knows, but she doesn’t understand it, and Baz won’t ever explain it to her.

She was named: Viola, Raquelle, Susanna, Mariel. 

In this one, she’s Fiona. His aunt. In this one, she’s pulling him from a coffin, looking both annoyed and worried over his state. 

She tries to talk him into staying and healing. In this life, with his mansion and his father. In this life, he has a stepmother, and the ghost of his mother clings on to the bandaged scars of his soul. He has become intimate with loss after so many times, has let it take, because that is all it knows to do. It takes, and he takes it. 

Loss; losing. It happens enough times that he stops referring to it in past tense.

-

Before this, he was nothing. Unborn, again. Waiting for his soul to find a path. It didn’t matter which way he went, or his gender, or his hopes and dreams. Baz’s soul wandered until it found the path that would take him straight to  _ him _ . The voice speaks to him in the meantime, reminders. A guide, maybe, that Baz has no appreciation for. 

_ You are both broken, _ says the voice.  _ His soul is fractured, missing pieces. You must understand how it aches to break, over and over again. Just because he doesn't remember doesn't mean that he does not ache for what he has lost, and for what he has suffered.  _

His voice begins to take form, an accent creeping in somewhere on the edges of his words. He’s been American before, and Italian, and Mexican. He’s spoken Greek and Chinese and Spanish. So many lives, so many memories that all come down to one soul.

He wants to ask why he always has to be the one to chase, the one left alone at the end, only to start all over again. He thinks this, but does not say it, remnants of a self-defense mechanism from lives past. He learned, about ten lives ago, that words are empty and fleeting, that they are spoken and lost in an instant.

Instead, he says, "So I'm stuck remembering him, each time. Falling in love with him, over and over, and then watching him die?  _ Letting  _ him?"

The voice was not kind in response, but it was not distant either. He suspects that his thoughts are just as loud as what he’d said out loud. 

_ You don't have to watch him die. But you will love him, inevitably. And he will love you, but he is fractured. He must first learn himself before he learns to love you properly.  _

"When will he do that, exactly?" Masking his pain with sarcasm, burning it away. It's not like him, but he feels the new life tangling with the threads of himself, adding to who he was before. 

_ Why don’t you help him?  _ For the toneless way it speaks, there’s an awful sadness in the words. It makes Baz’s temper flare. 

“You know why I don’t,” he snarls, which is another thing unlike him. He wonders if it is the new life that has made him this way, or the years of each soft thing in his chest calcifying, becoming sharp and pointing outward to protect his heart. 

_ Maybe it’ll be different this time. Maybe you should try it. There will be a lot of time in this life to help. Why don’t you try, Basil? _

“If that’s my new name, I hate it. I curse whoever named me in the next life.

_ When you find out your name, you may wish it was. Time is running. Be kind. Unguard your heart, and maybe things will change.  _

“I doubt it.” His voice was already gone by the time the words came out. The world swirled and disappeared, water down a drain, and then he’d been born again. 

-

Baz lays in bed; healing, reflecting. His leg goes stiff and aches, and takes some of the pressure off his chest. 

He thinks of his last life, then scrubs the image of Simon - Leila, in that life - off the back of his eyelids. She’d been beautiful, as always, and death had ruined it, as always. 

He thinks of this life, remembering Simon leaking blood from his pores. Storming around everywhere, looking every bit as fractured as his soul. 

He falls asleep and dreams of the first time they met in this life. Eleven years old, and not expecting it until he’d walked up to him. Once their hands had met in the middle, it was instantaneous. It was coming home, waking up in bed and realizing that he’d been there all along. 

In past lives, he’d been green eyed, grey eyed, brown. He’d had auburn hair and black, and purple, when he’d dyed it during college. 

In this one, when he looks up and finally meets Baz’s eyes, they’re an ordinary shade of blue, nothing special or worthy of a second look. 

Except, he’s never had blue eyes before, not in the countless cycles they’ve repeated. If Baz believed in luck, he might’ve called it so. But he’s been let down too many times in the past to consider it anything special. 

When he finds out that they’re roommates, he does everything he can to keep him at a distance. Simon Snow is overzealous and too friendly for his own good, and it is not hard for Baz to despise him at first. And at first, it works in his favor to be enemies. He keeps Simon at bay, represses any residual attraction he’d felt when he catches glimpses of Leila, Jesy, and Roman in his gestures. Remnants of the same soul. 

There’s something  _ other  _ to him now, like maybe Baz missed out on a life prior. 

It falls apart when he has to gather information for his family. For the war. 

Baz thought that his biggest problem in this life might’ve been his full name -  _ Tyrannus, really?  _ \- but the war is a perpetual reminder that being kind is not an option. 

_ I can not expose my heart to someone who’s trying to bury me beneath the ground. To someone I have loved, over and over again. To someone I have known dies, all the time, taking our loose ends with them to the grave. _

He writes this in a journal, on a single page, and burns the whole book. 

He does as he’s asked, because without his mother, it is his duty to become his father’s son. In between looking at Simon’s flaws, he finds everything else. His face is tense for their entire first year, a cross between fear and hesitance. In their second year, he grows a spine and learns to smile.

He does this because he slayed a dragon, because he’s murdered anything that threatens him. Because he is an orphan with only one friend and a mentor who cares more for his magic than for him. Baz thinks that, despite every memory he has of Simon’s old lives, this one is probably the worst.

It’s in third year when he sees the shift, and it’s in third year that he falls for him. He expected it, as he learned to, after the tenth time of the cycle.

But it is different now. He dreams of the voice, standing in a white room with no physical form. There is a mirror, and when he looks into it, he sees Simon, older and crying. When he blinks, it reflects his own face. 

_ You’ve noticed it, haven’t you? _

Baz stays silent, waiting for the patience to run thin. It’s an uphill battle, hopeless, in the way this life feels. 

“He’s not the same. It’s different this time.”

_ But it feels the same? _ The voice sounds like it has seen amusement on someone’s face but has never heard it, only an outline of what it should sound like. This worries Baz, for reasons he can’t explain.

“Of course, he’s the same soul. But there’s something strange.” 

He feels the phantom motion of pacing, of chewing his lower lip as he strides around the room, waiting for the voice to come through once again.

_He is different,_ it says, and the toneless sound is soft and, if it could feel, it would have been pitying. 

_ He has started to feel the weight of the years. This life is heavier on his soul than the last. He is changing, or perhaps, he already has. _

“But he’s the same. I still love him, the way I did before. It’s just that it feels like I’m seeing only pieces of him. Before, I could see the whole thing.”

The room fills with a heavy sort of silence, airy and dry. It smells of cloves and smoke - of his mother - for a second, before it turns into just smoke. 

_ I’m asking you once again, Basil. Be kind to him. Open your heart to him. _

Baz wakes with a start, nightmare fading behind his eyes with a sickening burst of light. The smoke he’d caught in his dream is thick in the room around them, filling his lungs and pulling a cough from the center of his chest.

It is uncomfortable and comforting, all at the same time.  _ He is different _ , said the voice, and Baz understands now, at least partially. 

Simon’s magic now,  _ and  _ soul. In this life, they are magicians. In this life, he’d been born a savior, an orphan with enough power to fill in the absence of parents or anyone. The pieces of his soul that had been buffed and scattered away by wind are starting to wear down on the edges, torn apart by this life.

It’s too much for him, Baz thinks.  _ Be kinder to him _ . 

He doesn’t know how to, though. 

Simon’s whimpering across the room distracts him, dragging his thoughts back to the room. The smoke hangs thick and heavy in the air, gray and clouding around his head. What does kindness feel like? Kindness only exists in his memories, of this life and past ones. Simon with his hand outstretched, the words  _ nice to meet you _ on his lips.

Leila, with a bag full of rings for Amy, for reasons like  _ just because _ and  _ I saw them, and thought of you. _

Mason, out of breath on his doorstep, with a jar full of fireflies and a grin.  _ You’ve never seen them before, so I ran over here to show you. _

Baz breathes and thinks about that, and Simon groans once more, before he does the first kind thing he’ll ever do for Simon Snow. 

Instead of letting him suffer, plagued by the nightmares of this life, Baz sits up and casts a lullaby spell, listening to the opening chords of the one his mother used to play for him. The song fades out as Simon stirs, replaced by another unfamiliar one. 

_ You are my sunshine, my only sunshine _

_ You make me happy, when skies are grey  _

Baz lays back in bed, listening to the song and watching Simon settle, breaths coming easier now. 

_ You’ll never know dear, how much I love you _

_ Please don’t take my sunshine away  _

Baz lets the music roll through him, hollowing him out and falling into sleep again. 

The only dream he has that night is of the voice, and all it says is  _ be patient. _

-

Time goes. Fourth year, fifth year, sixth. 

Baz casts the lullaby for every nightmare Simon has, on the nights that they argue, on the nights that Baz acts cruelly because of habit, because he knows how to keep Simon’s soul at bay to protect himself. 

But, it  _ is  _ different. Simon’s never been this persistent before, and this life has changed him. By now, he would have been kinder, softer. Gentled by whatever ties them together, before he realizes that he can make something of his feelings. In this life, he is mean, biting and growling and spiteful. 

He is a cannon out of control. Too much pressure on coal will make a diamond, but a fraction of that pressure will shatter it once it’s made. How do they know when he’s become what he’s supposed to if he’s not visible under every responsibility they’ve given him?

How do they know he’s not already everything he needs to be? 

It’s this thought that wakes him up, for real. 

He thrashes up and nearly breaks his nose on Fiona’s forehead, as she leans over him with a hand pressed to his head. 

“What the  _ fuck _ was that,” he snarls, feeling disoriented.  _ Had it all been a dream? Is his life only beginning? _

“A coma of sorts. Magically induced, to help you heal better. Relax, you were only under for two days.”

He stands, working against his protesting limbs, and makes his way to the bathroom to orient himself privately. First, he checks his pupils in the mirror for dilation, tugs at his features, and massages at his jaw to make sure he’s really awake. All his memories are intact, except for the past two days. He really has been asleep then.

Fiona’s voice comes muffled through the door. “Come back to sleep Baz. Your leg is all off.”

“Take me to school, I’ve missed enough,” he returns, stomping out of the bathroom and tugging on his loafers. He stands tall, ignoring the burning pain running through his leg.

She looks unimpressed as she huffs, stomping out of the room in an irritated imitation of him, and fetches the keys. “Malcom, we’re going.” He doesn’t protest, but he raises a cool eyebrow, caught off guard by Baz’s decision. 

“Be safe, Basil. You’re still not healthy.”

Baz won’t be able to catch his breath until he sees Simon again, though he’s not about to tell his father that. 

He goes back, two months late, and swings the dining hall doors open with a spell, just because he can. Something about being asleep for so long has his soul feeling restless, despite the aching, perpetual exhaustion in his body. 

It’s impossible to miss Simon. He’s always the brightest thing in the room, no matter who’s in it. Baz can feel his magic, his  _ soul _ , enveloping his own. Like coming home, no matter how lost he’d been before that. It’s such a rare novelty, in each life, to be so lost and still always feel at home the second he sees him again.

It’s not a warm greeting in this one though. He snarls and goes off, letting magic leak out everywhere. It’s a silent scream, it’s relieving some of the burden he drapes over himself like a coat, not to be removed even when he sleeps. 

It’s his life, and it’s fraying the edges of his soul. 

Baz repeats to himself  _ be kind _ , remembers the first time he was kind to Simon, the lullaby he’ll play for him until he drifts off peacefully again. He wonders why that song, but never asks, too afraid of either the answer he’ll receive, or the question Simon will throw back at him. 

That night, Simon throws an odd look at Baz before they go to sleep and he wonders but doesn’t ask. It feeds into his dream, as the world swirls and falls away.

_ She and Ethan, sitting under a tree full of ripening fruit. Sometimes, the fruit falls in his hand when he sticks it out, and other times, he waits hopelessly, but with that perpetual grin still on his face.  _

_ He says, “Masie,” when he addresses Baz because in this life, he is a woman. He says, “I read a story the other day, and I don’t recall it at all.” _

_ And then laughs, because Ethan was full of laughter. For some reason, Baz is starting to see Simon in all of them, but when he looks closer, the face shifts and blurs away.  _

_ “The knight asks the princess if it’s better to speak or to die,” he says, and pauses for dramatic effect. “So? Is it better to speak or die.” _

_ Baz watches Masie’s mouth move, hears her voice and knows it like his own, because they’re his words. “Die,” she says, and watches as Ethan’s mouth falls open. Baz watches her watch him, and knows already that he was in love. “You ruined it!” He exclaims. “She says speak, in the story.” _

_ “I don’t believe you,” she laughs, and they laugh.  _

_ The dream ends with Ethan kissing her, holding himself above her while she reaches up to kiss him. Again, and again. Whispered words float through the air and Baz feels every touch on his own ghost like a phantom, watches and knows the precise moment when their twisted bodies become Simon and Baz, instead of Ethan and Masie. _

He wakes up and burns fire above his palms for hours until the sun comes up, and Simon just stares, unmoving in his bed. In that life, Ethan and Masie had gone home separately, without having touched at all. In that life, neither spoke, and Ethan went off to college. And they never spoke again. They’d died, eventually, silent and apart.

_ Is it better to speak or to die?  _ He’d asked. 

_ Die, _ Baz thinks, watching Simon’s blue eyes dance with the light of the flame.  _ Over and over. _

-

Simon says he has something to say, when he catches Baz in his mother’s old office the next night. He looks nervous, wringing his hands as all the other lives of his before this one. In this one though, he sucks his bottom lip.

In this one, Baz suspects he has so much magic that it tugs at his edges, revealing all the extra pieces of him that have hidden somewhere along the folded over bits. He is more kinetic than he’s ever been, in this body. It stores magic and a soul, and a lifetime misfortune. 

He wants to hold him, more than anything. He settles for following next to him, walking upstairs together as Simon fidgets. Baz’s mind is running around the impossibility of this moment, of being next to him for once without feeling like it’s a race. 

When they settle on the bed and Simon tells him that his mother came to visit, all his grief rises again. Where the nightmare of the previous night pressed into his memory, the crushing weight of this life stumbles into him, knocking him over. 

Simon leaves, because even if both of their souls know kindness, their bodies were trained for war. Simon is a bomb that can’t even get his own self untangled, and Baz is built of cruel memory and the sharp bodies he is given to hide his soul.

Even then, knowing this, Baz still tells him that he won’t get out of what he promised. They swear, with magic, and Baz recalls a pinky promise from the past, two different bodies who swore to be together always, sharing the same soul.

Neither of them lets go for a while. When they do, Baz feels the whispers of kindness in his skin. 

It goes on for a while. Bunce gets involved, because she’s smarter than Simon and almost as smart as Baz, and generally better at problem-solving than both of them. Baz has started to measure the events of this truce as  _ things that could get Simon killed _ and  _ all the other insignificant things _ . 

The first is a dragon attack. It feels like the humdrum, from the roiling burn in the air to the dry feeling tugging on Baz’s magic. It turns out that the scorch and the parched air is more flame than absence of magic, more dragon’s fire than humdrum. 

Dorian burned in his flat, in a past life, before Ansel could save him. 

Baz is not going to let Simon Snow burn again.

He launches himself at the beast and they take care of it, losing boundaries and the careful walls of their truce. Simon shares his magic with him to help and it feels like entwining their souls, feels like the closest thing to heaven that Baz may ever get. 

Simon wants to talk about it later that night, to try again, and so he invites himself into Baz’s space. 

The only reason Baz cares for it so clearly is because he’s not sure that it won’t kill him to be so close to Simon, holding hands on his bed. They see stars all around them, and even when the magic fades, Baz finds them in Simon’s eyes. 

It ends in a fight, as it usually does with them. But in every dream, Baz pulls the right string and they kiss instead.

The second thing that could get Simon killed is coming to Baz’s house for Christmas. He’s made an accidental break-through, and it reminds Baz of all the accidents that led to the ends of the lives that led them here. He grinds his teeth against that anger and somehow it becomes adoration, as he takes in the impossibility of Simon Snow, alive. 

He thinks, perhaps, that this body might be the closest to his soul. Golden, warm. Unyielding and caring too much, and overbearing. This is what Baz dreams of, in between dreams of Simon being tangled in his arms, both dying and kissing him. He’s not sure whether to call it a nightmare or a dream when he wakes in the morning. 

The third thing that nearly gets Simon killed is visiting a vampire den, though the risk is not in the visit. It is Baz, angry and driving recklessly. He grips the steering wheel tight and floors the pedals and thinks about how losing his mother in this life is a pain that compares to losing Simon in all of them.

Simon feels it, lets the car fill up with untouchable sadness and places a hand on Baz’s arm, sharing magic and soul alike. Simon could have been killed by the reckless way that he stopped the car, or the flames that are raining from tree branches like fire, but he wasn’t. He doesn’t let go of Baz’s arm either. 

Baz, sitting with his head between his knees, suddenly realizes with startling clarity that Simon Snow is an impossible version of his fragile soul. Finally, he has a vessel that can protect him, and keep him alive for as long as possible. 

And so, Baz sets the forest alight, hoping that the flames will reach his dull, waxy skin and fall in love with it, that he and the fire will become so together that there is nothing left but bone and ash. The cycle will reset, but perhaps life will be kinder to him next time, so he doesn’t have to deal with both the tragedy of life, and the tragedy of loving someone who will never realize.

Simon reaches him before the fire does, though, and Baz thinks again of his realization. 

In quick succession, he remembers the dream.  _ He is different _ , whispers the voice in his head, and Baz wants to ask how different, if that difference means that Simon could love him. 

He sees Simon on his knees in front of him, damp with melting snow and eyes dark blue against the fire at his back. Baz has his wand out to spell Simon away before his ending repeats. 

“Simon,” he says, because it is the closest to goodbye that he’s ever gotten. 

And then, for the first time in a thousand, or maybe millions of years, Simon kisses him. Baz thinks, distantly, because everything is distant except for Simon, who’s moved right into his arms. 

He thinks that perhaps it doesn’t matter how many years of non-kisses it’s been. That maybe only this one kiss matters. What is darkness compared to light? Emptiness compared to stretched full? The years of non-kisses are a silent room, and this one is a joyous orchestra striking music along the edges of his body. 

Heat creeps in and gets lost between their mouths, as flames get closer and swallow them both. And he can’t bear to lose him now, not like this. 

He puts the fire out and grabs Simon, and doesn’t let go for a long time. 

Simon kickstarts time again a while later, reminds Baz that he is thirsty and that his body is numb from the cold. The slip of his fingers through Baz’s hair is enough to remind him that they are alive, that they are inhabiting living bodies that can freeze or starve. 

_ And love _ , he thinks, as he stares at Simon’s gentle mouth. Time splits again, bending in so many surreal ways. They go home together, heat up food and bring it upstairs. He feels the ghost of Simon’s lips on his own, feels Simon’s insisting stare. 

To articulate thought, where Simon can’t. In every life, Baz has been better at speaking, even if he’s never taken the chance to. After so many lifetimes of silence, though, he wonders if he could arrange them around this lifetime, if he could describe his feelings for Simon without ever mentioning the other times he’s loved him. 

_ My love is too big for my body _ , he wants to say,  _ I feel like I’ve spent so much time loving you. How can I ever explain the contents of my soul after so long waiting? Will the words be worth it? _

Simon stares at him, and he stares right back down at his knees. Cold, guarded, by the rush of affection he feels. To conceal is to be safe, to be hidden is to stay alive. 

The look on Simon’s face is every word that Baz cannot say to him. 

That night lasts longer than several of their past lives. They spend it tangled, hands in hair and shared breaths. Simon, on his knees, hovering just over him. They are a dream; Ethan and Masie reincarnated. It’s so real that it hurts. 

The fourth thing that could have killed Simon was Baz’s reckless lips trailing kisses down his neck with fangs tucked away. 

The fifth was wrapping himself around Baz before they fell asleep, whispering unintelligible things into shivering skin. They fall asleep like that, and Baz dreams of spring time and a first meeting, and then of a coffee shop, and a lake. On and on, ending right before each nightmare, until he finally wakes up to the sight of Simon Snow.

Currently, he’s starting to believe that his brain cut off the bad endings to those lives because another one was coming in his current one. Wellbelove shows up, towed along by Bunce. After a day of failed planning, they tug him home, and Baz is left pulling images from memories and dreams. 

_ Impossible _ , he thinks, when he remembers kissing so much that his mouth had gone sore.  _ Just a dream _ , he scoffs, when he recalls the exact feeling of Simon’s hair between his fingers.

And then when Simon shows up again, soaking wet with melted snow in his hair and mud streaked everywhere, he thinks again.  _ Impossible _ .

And when they’ve eaten dinner together, and gone back to Baz’s room, and he tries his damn hardest to speak kindly, Baz thinks again.  _ A dream.  _ Because what else could explain this moment? He wants to frame it, shove it in the homes of every life past and break down the walls of all his old hearts. 

He says instead, that he wants Simon’s company, that he wants everything he’s willing to give, in less words than that. 

The sixth thing that could have killed Simon was the humdrum itself, sitting on a tree branch in Baz’s forest, sucking all the magic from the world. 

He’s been half dead for so long that to be more dead is a heavy weight on the center of his chest. He thinks he’s dying - he can’t be sure. The world always restarts before he can take himself out; he’s born into a new life again. 

This is the absence of magic, inside his chest. Dying again. He’s not sure that this is something he can come back from. The inside of him feels scraped, raw. When he sees him, his Simon, he nearly sobs.

The sixth thing seems to be killing Baz instead of Simon. It regards him lazily, grinning like mad. Baz isn’t paying much attention. The world is burning and Simon’s holding the match.

Time becomes a blurry thing again. Baz’s father would have killed Simon if he’d stayed any longer. Simon could die in the middle of his path to wherever he’s going. Baz’s time slips, sand in an hourglass, until he tears off to find Bunce’s house. 

It doesn’t take long to burst in, to take account of everything and make sure Simon’s still whole. He’s not sure if Simon flinches when he touches his back as he walks them upstairs, but he thinks he might’ve.

And there’s a revelation, and it’s the seventh thing that might kill Simon, except this time, the threat leaves before there’s a chance. Baz takes off to find the Numpties, ignoring Simon for both of their own safety, and finds the truth among their half-corpses. 

Baz might be too late to get to the eighth thing that could kill Simon Snow. 

The reason this matters so much used to elude him, but it doesn’t anymore. Something  _ has _ changed, just like the voice said. There’s something different about this, urgent, like it’s never been before. 

If Simon dies now, after they’ve gotten further than they never do, what could that mean? 

Would they ever come back? Would they have to repeat, with this missed chance between them?

He drives until he can’t with all the snow piling on the ground, until Bunce is opening the car door with shaking hands. She’d been silent for the whole ride, but Baz can see the words locked up behind her jaw, rattling around and desperate to escape. He takes that as a lack of trust, and can’t find it in him to take the time to gain it. 

They don’t have time. Baz can feel Simon’s magic burning through the air, and the echo of a thousand deaths trailing it - together, they make a cacophonous roar. Baz follows it all the way to the Chapel, tucking Bunce close enough to hold her up. 

Maybe she’s holding him up as well. Baz casts something, and they fall into the Chapel floor, surrounded by light and noise. 

The ninth thing is the boy Simon’s holding onto. The light dims in the room until they catch sight of him holding onto the Humdrum, stance heavy and gaze full of certainty. 

Baz flashes back to death after death. None of them have looked quite like this. Then again, Simon’s never kissed him before. There’s never been a life where they go further than prolonged staring, than casual hand holding.  _ This might be it _ , Baz thinks, and the thought grows thorns when he sees Simon collapse to the floor. 

The tenth thing that might kill Simon Snow is the headmaster, who’s yanking at him and demanding something of him. All Baz knows is that Simon’s crying, that the sound is too much to bear. That he’s thirsty. 

It happens so fast that he’s not sure who dies, at first. There’s movement and then a slack body, a twist of screaming then silence, then tears. Simon, shaking. 

Baz has never lived a life in which they’re both alive after so many chances to die. He’s never known a life where Simon’s soul screams out and he’s allowed to cradle it. Where at the end of it, they’re both alive, even with the tears at their edges.

He cannot stop thinking about all the death that should have taken Simon, but didn’t. He cannot stop thinking, suddenly, about what the voice said, all those months ago. Not about kindness, but about his difference. 

As time passes, he starts to understand exactly what she means. 

One night, after Baz has gone home, he dreams of it again. He walks into a room, all white. Notices the mirror on the wall, and the fact that he sees himself in it. There’s a woman sitting in an invisible chair, seemingly floating in the white expanse. 

She’s got blonde, curly hair flowing down her shoulders, framing her broad face. And the second she speaks, Baz realizes it’s been her all along. 

“Hello,” she says, then giggles. The sound isn’t terribly unfamiliar, but it still buzzes in a way that he can’t grasp it completely.

“I figured it out,” he says, wandering around through blankness. He’s not sure that he’ll ever figure out the particular strangeness of  _ this _ \- the woman, this blank space in his mind, or what it means. But the look on her face says that those things don’t matter.

“That he was different because this is his best reflection of his soul? He used to be potential, you know. In those lives.”

“And now he’s what? A martyr?”

“He always was. Now, he’s brave.”

His mind flashes to a kiss in the forest, to his terrible boyfriend speech. To every fight against the repercussions to help him find his mother’s killer, to every careful glance in between.

He’d thought that perhaps she may have been saying so all along. 

“You were talking about now.” 

She grins. “This is your last chance. The cycle won’t restart after this one. You’ve both learned enough lessons down here, haven’t you? There are better places to be.”

Baz realizes that the whole time, she’d been referring to Simon’s current state, as they are now - Simon and Baz. She’d been preparing him, whittling him down into who he is now, to make things right, to teach him everything he’d need to know about how to love him properly.

That no matter how hard he’d fought it to save himself, there was never an alternative. At his core, he is kind, he cares too much. That, no matter what, it was always going to be Simon in the end. 

The things that used to look like flaws, like gravestones, are starting to bloom like flowering plants. 

Baz closes his eyes and sees that first spring, the first meeting. Catches a glimpse of Simon, as he is now, bearing a wide grin. His eyes open, flashing with mirth. 

His cracked pieces slide into place with Simon’s, perfect and right. And he wakes. Alive, full of something like love. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading ! as always, comments, kudos, and sharing is appreciated <3
> 
> hope y'all are staying safe and remember: ACAB !


End file.
